Fleming Allan isn’t as readily known as Fred Rose, Bob Nolan, or Billy Hill, but he contributed his share to the genre of sagebrush songs that established silver screen singers Bob Baker, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers while maintaining a career as arranger, popular song writer, and music publisher.

Born Fleming Allan Smith February 2, 1904, in California and brought up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where most folks think he was born, he lived the majority of his youth at 621W. Fourteenth Street except for a brief period during the way in 1916 when his parents were live-in caretakers at Sherman Park, home of the Great Plains Zoo and the Delbridge Museum. Both grandfathers were immigrants. His father’s father came from Germany and his mother’s from England via Canada. Both married American girls, from Maryland and Iowa respectively before settling in the West. His father, Charles N. Smith, was a postal clerk and bride, Minnie Fleming, was a housewife and mother.

Following his Washington High School graduation, Fleming studied music at the University of Pennsylvania, eventually landing a job as theater organist in Chicago from 1927to 1931.

In addition to playing score and thematic cues for silent films, he would back the various stage shows from Minstrel to Vaudeville, often arranging presentations for optimum audience appeal. Significantly, his theater work also marked the decline of silent movies, Minstrel, and Vaudeville shows thanks to the advent of talkies and radio. Radio picked up the talented singers and comedians placing them in a new larger electronic venue but one in which the routine presentations used for three to five shows a day in theaters wouldn’t satisfy listeners. New material and arrangements diminishing similarities to other acts became necessary. With his theater career reaching the extinction point, Fleming Smith moved to radio station WLS as pianist and arranger working with the acts that were becoming part of daily broadcasts and their increasingly popular Barn Dance show Saturday night. His facility at arranging and knowledge of the old songs kept him busy as Music Director at the powerful station. Beginning in 1931, he began to publish songs he co-wrote with some of the station’s assembled talent. “My Ozark Mountain Home,” co-written with Gene Arnold and Fritz Clark was marketed with a large cover photo of the Maple City Four. With Al Rice of that group, he co-wrote “When It’s Prayer Meetin’ Time in the Hollow” published in 1933.

For his output as a professional songwriter, he changed his name, keeping Fleming, his mother’s maiden name, and using his middle name, Allan, as his last. Under his full name, he made a return visit to Sioux Falls in 1931 for the town’s 75th Anniversary celebration, composing “The Diamond Jubilee March” for the occasion. Twenty-five years later, he contributed to the Centurama Pageant festivities held for eight days at Viking Field again with the full composer credit of Fleming A. Smith.

Two years after starting at WLS, he was “kicked upstairs” to work on the production staff at NBC’s network studio. Another WLS star, Leland “Tumble” Weed, went to Universal Studios becoming their singing cowboy, Bob Baker. WLS would also be the stepping off point for Patsy Montana, The Hoosier Hotshots, Maple City Four, and other acts briefly spotlighted in films.

His songwriting career began in earnest at the same training ground that helped Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne hone their craft – Republic Studios working with Gene Autry and Three Mesquiteer. “Behind Those Swinging Doors” was his debut film song in Ghost Town Gold. Gene Autry introduced “In the Heart of the West” in “The Old Corral and “If You Want to Be a Cowboy” in Git Along Little Dogies. During the stage show at a stock-selling rally, Fleming makes a cameo appearance in the film playing the piano.

Yodeling Kid from Pine Ridge provided the novelty “Millhouse Wild West Show” and Gene’s August 1937 Public Cowboy No. 1 showcased the romantic “I Picked up the Trail When I Found You,” the emotional “Old Buck a Roo,” and the light-hearted “The West Ain’t What it Used to Be.” “Old Buck a Roo” was reprised in 1952’s Barbed Wire.

Two films released within days of each other in December 1937 featured the same song. The first was Republic’s Three Mesquiteers film Wild Horse, noted for the solo debut of Roy Rogers as Dick Weston, and the second, from Universal, which would become his new home, The Singing Outlaw starring Bob Barker: “When the Round Up Days are Over.” This lead to title confusion amongst film researchers since the Republic version began with ‘Riding High’ and the Universal with the, as written, ‘Yippie Ay.’ One of the Three Mesquiteers singing the song was WLS alumnus, Max Terhune.

Fleming wrote 41 songs for the Universal Bob Baker films. Including “Riding Down That Utah Trail,” “Dusty and Dry,” “I’ve Got a Cowboy Song for Sale,” and “When a Cowboy’s Day is Done.”

That new fellow, Roy Rogers, sang Fleming’s favorite song, “I Sold My Saddle For an Old Guitar,” in Saga of Death Valley at Republic.

After the war, Fleming Allan songs were placed at different studios, Columbia used several in the Ken Curtis talent showcase Westerns Singin’ on the Trail and Over the Santa Fe Trail including the title tunes and the parody “Bonny Bonny Braes of Wyoming” in Throw a Saddle on a Star by Andy Clyde and friends.

His last Western film song was his 1933 composition “When It’s Prayer Meetin’ Time in the Hollow” in Gene Autry’s next to last release 1951’s Saginaw Trail.

During his Chicago period, Allan’s name was consistently misspelled ‘Allen’ by the Chicago publishing firm of M.M. Cole in their sheet music and song folio which has proven irksome to some researchers seeking accuracy ever since. This was not a problem with his West Coast publishers, but credits in the 1940 RKO film Stage to Chino reverted to the misspelling.

Publishing occupied the last decade of his life running his own publishing company, Country Music Trends in Beverly Hills.

He was little known, but a third of his output of 300 plus songs were dedicated to the West and the celluloid cowboy. Even if he were nicknamed “The Sagebrush Song Scrivener of Sioux Falls,” which he wasn’t, it wouldn’t have detracted from his product, his talent, and the stars that sang them and the audience who heard them.

Fleming Allan Sith died February 2, 1965, sixty-one years from the day of his birth.
Lawrence Hopper

In addition to the songs scattered among the many song folios issued under radio and movie star names or radio stations, the books containing his collected works are:

• Fleming Allan’s “Folio of Bob Baker Songs”
• Dick Foran’s “Folio of Songs with Fleming Allan”
• Fleming Allan’s “Songs of the Golden West”
• Hal Raynor’s “The Cowboy Hymnal”
• Hal Raynor’s “The Wild West Folio”

Awards:

• 2007 Hall of Fame Inductees